RIGHT AND WRONG 109
feasting of the Roman capital, how it would
almost have taxed the resources of a modern
pastrycook ; of the cruelty of gladiatorial shows,
how they were nearly as bad as auto$~da-f%,
except that a man had his fair chance, and was
not tortured for torture's sake ; of the oppres-
sion of provincials by people like Verres, of
whom it may even be said that if they had
been the East India Company they could not
have been worse ; of the complaints of Tacitus
against bad and mad emperors (as Sir Henry
Maine says) ; and of the still more serious
complaints of the modern historian against the
excessive taxation 1 which was one great cause
of the fall,of the empire. Of all this we are
told a great deal; but we are not told of the
many thousands of honourable men who carried
civilisation to the ends of the known world,
and administered a mighty empire so that it
mankind transacted their business with an ordinary confidence in
the force of conscience and right reason. The steady development
of enlightened legal principles conclusively proves the general de-
pendence upon law as a guide and corrector of manners. In the
camp, however, more especially, as the chief sphere of this purify-
ing activity, the great qualities of the Roman character continued
to be plainly manifested. This history of the Cmmn presents to
us a constant succession of brave, patient, resolute* and faithful
soldiers, men deeply impressed with a sense of duty, superior to
vanity, despisers of boasting, content toft toll in obscurity and shed
their blood at the frontiers of the empire, unrepining at the cold
mistrust of their masters, not clamorous for the honours so
sparingly awarded to them, but satisfied in the daily work of their
hands, and full of faith in the national destiny which they were
daily accomplishing."
1 Pinlay, Greece under the Romans,
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